so tell the world, i'm coming home
by jumping trains
Summary: Five years after Katie makes a choice she desperately wishes she could take back, her sisters impending nuptials force the girl back to Toronto, where Katie comes face to face with all the reasons keeping her away and must then deal with all the repercussions. Slight AU.


so tell the world, i'm coming home

* * *

_The best way out is always through. –Robert Frost_

one.

* * *

"I'll just get you a script and we'll be all done." said Katie gently to the desolate mother sitting uneasily in the corner of the pale room. She gave a tight smile in response and motioned for her younger daughter to whom the check-up was concerning to come toward her. The hollow-cheeked blonde child stepped down from the bed and moved slowly to her mothers lap, embracing her as she sat down. Katie swallowed the sadness she felt for the pair and began to leave the room, though not fast enough to miss the question Katie's line of profession had caused her to hear so many times – a question she so desperately wished she could answer with a yes every time.

"Mommy," the girl no more than nine-years-of-age whispered, "Am I going to be okay?"

Katie's insides clenched and she forced herself to walk away from the child, forced herself not to turn around and assure them that the little girl would make it when she knew there was little chance of it. She numbly turned down the hallway, passing colleagues and the many nameless faces she saw everyday, it seemed like hours had passed before she finally reached her destination.

A slightly shaky hand went out to reach for the door handle before it swung backward and left Katie face to face with Keith, a fellow pediatrician who had been employed the same time she was. Recognition floods through Keith's mildly handsome features and before he can open his lips to say something Katie presses hers together and quickly moves past him. She can feel his gaze linger at the back of her head while she walks away and hears him leave with an audible sigh as the door closes behind him.

Breathing through her nose, Katie opens the grey filing cabinet with her name labeled in print letters across the side and as she pulls out the script pad a familiar buzz vibrates against her pant pocket. Her face sets into a scowl and she reaches into the pocket, taking the vibrating mobile phone into her hand, asking herself how it could go off when she had checked it twice before setting it to silent.

Her queries are answered though when she spots the name Maya Matlin across the top of the screen as she brings the phone into her line of vision. Katie recalls setting it to only vibrate when immediate members of her family called – working by pager had made her more prone to emergency planning so she had set her phone to always keep her alert for any emergency that may occur to her sister, mother and father while she stayed oceans away in California.

"Maya what's wrong?" Katie breathes into the phone, previously numb heartbeat speeding up.

The girl in question laughs into the speaker. "You've got to stop answering your phone like that Katie." Her laughter stifles Katie's panic which instead manifests into irritation.

"Hey you can't blame me, I told you that the only days that are safe to call for just a chat are Fridays when I'm not working."

"Oh." Maya answers lamely. "So you're at the hospital right now?"

"Yes." She rolls her eyes. "And if what you've got to say isn't an emergency it can wait four hours-"

Her sentence isn't even finished when Maya begins spluttering hastily, "Wait! Katie it's important!"

"What Maya could possibly be so important to keep me on the phone when I'm on my rounds at a hospital?"

"Imgettingmarried."

Katie's brows furrow, "Huh?"

"Camproposedtome." The younger girl rushes out once again.

"Maya you need to separate your words."

Katie hears a long groan into the speaker. "Cam." Maya begins slowly, dragging each letter out. "Asked. Me. To. Marry. Him."

Katie freezes and something that used to feel like her heart begins to convulse and her grip on the phone slips, causing it to land with a loud clack against the tiled floor.

"Katie did you get that?" Maya's voice sounds from the ground but all Katie can focus on is how much she can't breathe. Her lungs feel like they are broken, no air is coming in or going out. It feels like the four walls of the all white room are shrinking, trapping Katie in. It's only when her barren ears pick up her name being yelled from the top of someone's lungs that she remembers how to breathe.

She's almost hyperventilating when she brings the cracked iPhone to her ear and answers her sisters constant calls. "I'm here. I'm here."

"Finally! So did you hear what I said before you went into Katie-Space?"

Katie nods, and when she remembers Maya can't actually see her she manages a weak, "Congratulations."

"You don't sound very congratulatory," The younger girl mutters and Katie, before she can stop herself, pictures the scrunched up expression her sister would get when someone denies her of something and it dawns on her that he sister can't look like that anymore, not when she hasn't even seen Maya since she left. "It's been years Katie, you still can't not like Cam."

"Oh, no Maya I didn't mean it like that." She explains, feeling bad for not only giving her sister the wrong idea but for all time she spent on her own. "It's just a shock, you know?"

"I know it seems really rushed but it's been four years and I love him."

"I know you do Maya. I'm happy for you, both of you."

"So..." Maya trails off, clearing her throat a few times before continuing, "Do you think you could uh, maybe, kinda uh, come down and help me break the news to mom and dad?"

Katie doesn't even register the question before she disagrees, "No."

"But Katie!"

"No Maya."

"I know you have work Katie but please? They won't be angry if you're there, they'll be too busy celebrating you being home for the first time in five years." The younger girl tries but ultimately fails to hide the bitterness in her voice.

Katie registers a foreign wetness trickling down her cheeks. "I call _every_ week."

"That's not the same thing Katie and you know it."

Using her free arm, Katie wipes the wetness away with her wrist, mentally forcing whatever chemical brought them on to stop. "I just can't come down Maya, I'm sorry."

"Can you just think about it for a few days Katie? I would really love it if you were my maid of honour."

There goes her heart again. "Shouldn't Tori would take that job?"

Maya scoffs. "Yeah Tori the girl I see everyday over the sister I haven't seen in years."

Katie bites her lip, drawing blood and whispers "Bye Maya."

Her sister recognising this is where the phone call ends, shouts a quick reminder into the speaker. "Remember to think about it!"

Katie, withdrawing her teeth from her lip, puts the phone back into her pocket and reaches for the script pad, filling out a two prescriptions for Abigail White, and feels a familiar yet strange tingling in her stomach as she writes a third, for a woman named Kate White. She pockets both the handwritten and the back copy of Kate's scripts and takes the two handwritten copies for Abigail back down to the room where she had left the mother and daughter.

"Sorry I took so long," Katie apologises sincerely as she enters the examining room, "I had a phone call I needed to take."

"It's fine." The woman stands, her hand gripped in the child's and they step toward Katie who hands the mother the scripts and detachedly explains the dosage of the pain medication. When she finishes the mother asks what the second prescription is for.

"I also prescribed some Ambien to help with her sleep, give her no more than half a pill thirty minutes before bed each night."

The older woman manages a weak smile. "Thank you Dr. Matlin."

The line in the drug store four blocks from Katie's apartment is so long it makes her almost want to walk out and forget the only thing that would make things better. Though it seems her will is stronger this day than most others, so she sticks it out, biting her tongue from threatening to stab the woman behind her who keeps impatiently yelling for the line to "Hurry the fuck up."

As the man behind the counter rings up her payment and hands her the paper bag, Katie is reminded of the first time she bought pills that she didn't need. A bitter laugh chokes up in her throat and she wonders why history always seemed to repeat it itself – first with Maya and now the pills, she wonders seriously whether or not she should watch out for Bianca DeSousa but laughs at her own foolishness and reminds herself she is alone in California, that no one can find her unless she wants to be found.

Her icy irises flit across the busy sidewalk and up at the setting sun, taking in every last detail of the pathway she knows she'll never see again, down from the number of cracks in the cement to the number of clouds in the orange hued sky. She pauses to look behind her too many times to count, swearing that a head of curly hair is trailing her but finds nothing every time. When Katie reaches her apartment complex, she buzzes in the code and forces herself to stop looking back.

She steps tentatively inside apartment 3B, glancing around the empty lounge, searching for the curly locks that seem to be haunting her. Finding nothing, she exhales and with a renewed confidence Katie unfurls the paper bag and opens the small orange cylinder tube, pouring pills that she loses count of at twenty-four, into her palm. She lets the weight settle for a moment and moves to the kitchen, getting a glass of water she begins to swallow pill by pill until her palms are empty.

A sensation that would feel something like queasiness if Katie could register what that felt like settles in her stomach and she walks insensately to something she briefly registers as her bedroom and falls across the mattress, closing her eyes as a darkness falls over her.


End file.
